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White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon’s departure could signal at least some shifts
in the administration’s immigration policy.

There won’t be any changes “at the ground level” in terms of actions by the Homeland
Security and Justice departments, Center for Immigration Studies Executive Director
Mark Krikorian told Bloomberg BNA Aug. 18. But there could be changes in policies
that need to be made “at the White House level,” he said.

And that could mean a more definite approach to how the Trump administration deals
with the deferred action for childhood arrivals program, said Krikorian, whose organization
supports lower immigration levels.

DACA, which just saw its fifth anniversary, provides deportation protection and work
permits to nearly 800,000 young, undocumented immigrants who came to the country as
children.

It seems like Trump is “letting Texas dictate terms here,” Lynn Tramonte, deputy director
of the pro-immigrant group America’s Voice, told Bloomberg BNA Aug. 18. Texas Attorney
General Ken Paxton (R) in June threatened to sue the administration over DACA if it’s
not ended by Sept. 5.

Bannon and Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser,
were in a “tug of war during the transition about what to do about DACA,” Krikorian
said. “Kushner’s the reason DACA hasn’t been discontinued” despite Trump’s campaign
promise to end the program on his first day in office, he said.

Now that Bannon’s gone, Kushner is likely to “move policy to the left” on immigration
policy items like DACA, he said.

A representative for the White House didn’t respond to Bloomberg BNA’s request for
comment.

Deportation Policy Not Changing

Tramonte doesn’t foresee an immigration policy shift in the near future.

“It’s just become clear to us” that the president has selected people to “completely
reorient our deportation policy to go after the easiest targets,” she said. Those
people include White House Senior Policy Adviser Stephen Miller, Chief of Staff John
Kelly, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Director Thomas Homan, she said.

“Their animus is towards immigrants,” whether legal or illegal, Tramonte said. They
develop policies that favor immigrants from European countries to the detriment of
Latin American and African immigrants, she said.

Tramonte pointed to the Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy (RAISE)
Act (
S. 1720), recently backed by the White House. It would reduce legal immigration and substitute
a points system for the employment-based visa system. She also mentioned the president’s
travel ban, which would block the entry of immigrants from six majority-Muslim countries
as well as refugees from Syria.

“It wasn’t just Steve Bannon who was pushing these,” Tramonte said.

“Different people leave” the White House and “nothing changes,” she said. “The president
is still the president.”

“President Trump has demonstrated his commitment to deliver on his immigration reform
promises and continues to have a deep bench of experienced policy experts who will
advance that agenda,” Dave Ray, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration
Reform, said in a statement provided to Bloomberg BNA Aug. 18. “The overwhelming public
support for Trump’s immigration policies and urgency to put those in place transcend
any one person in the White House,” said Ray, whose organization advocates for lower
immigration levels.

“Moreover, the ball is now in Congress’s court to move the Trump agenda forward,”
he said.

Effect on Government Funding Deal?

But Congress’ upcoming debate over a funding measure for the federal government could
be an area where Bannon’s absence is felt, Krikorian said.

“DACA’s their most important bargaining chip,” he said. And legal status for DACA
recipients could get traded for “some trivial thing” like billions of dollars in funding
for a border wall, which “I’m not even sure we need,” he said.

Kushner may “maneuver” Trump into trading DACA for border wall funding, which would
be “one of the worst deals in American history,” Krikorian said.

Rather, that kind of concession would have to be paired with something that would
ameliorate the effects, Krikorian said. Those effects include additional, future illegal
immigration and the potential that legalized immigrants will turn around and petition
for legal status for their undocumented parents, he said.

A better deal would be enactment of DACA in exchange for making the E-Verify electronic
employment verification system mandatory, as well as other enforcement measures like
the Michael Davis, Jr. and Danny Oliver in Honor of State and Local Law Enforcement
Act (
H.R. 2431), Krikorian said. Adding the RAISE Act also would be a good idea, he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Laura D. Francis in Washington at
lfrancis@bna.com

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